Welcome to The Sciku Project – the latest scientific and mathematical discoveries, thoughts and ideas as scientific haiku.
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The Blood and the Run by Mike Fainzilber
flying dracula
by Mike Fainzilber
bleeding to run
running to bleed
This is a haiku about the stuff of nightmares – vampire bats. As we know, vampire bats feed on blood, and blood is low in carbohydrates and lipids that are the typical fuel for activities that require high energy. Flight is highly costly in energy, so how can it be fueled by blood alone? Certain blood-sucking insects can fuel their flight by direct metabolism of amino acids (the building blocks of proteins) in their blood meals, but this metabolic specialization was known only in very few insect species.
A team of biologists traveled from the University of Toronto to Belize to find out if vampire bats can do the same. The researchers took advantage of the fact that vampire bats are exceptionally good runners, and they use this to approach their prey along the ground. Bats were fed cow blood with labeled amino acids and the researchers then placed them on treadmills, monitoring tracer release in the bat’s breath as they ran on the treadmill.
The experiments clearly showed that vampire bats use amino acids as their main fuel source while running. Since running is a major hunting mode for this species, they literally bleed prey to run, and run to bleed…
Further reading:
‘Vampire bats rapidly fuel running with essential or non-essential amino acids from a blood meal’, 2024, Rossi, G.S. & Welch, K.C., Biology Letters, available: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2024.0453
‘How blood-sucking vampire bats get their energy’, 2024, The Economist, available: https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2024/11/06/how-blood-sucking-vampire-bats-get-their-energy
Author bio:
Mike Fainzilber’s day job is a biologist. He began writing haiku and senryu during the pandemic, and this side effect of COVID-19 has not worn off yet. Editors in his two spheres of activity have been known to suggest that he should best restrict his efforts to the other sphere. Find out more about Mike’s research via his lab’s website and connect with him on X/Twitter @MFainzilber or on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/mfainzilber.bsky.social
Read more sciku by Mike: ‘The deepest shade’, ‘Jellyfish’, and ‘In the Deep’.
Neutrinos by John Hawkhead
neutrino mass for the fleetingly here
by John Hawkhead
Neutrinos are fundamental particles and are members of the same group as the electron (leptons). Neutrinos have very little mass, no charge, and travel through the Earth in milliseconds.
Some Christian religions hold a ‘mass’ for the deceased to celebrate a life. So, this monoku poem links the short time on Earth for neutrinos with our fleeting time on Earth.
Further reading:
‘Neutrino’, Wikipedia article, available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino
Author bio:
John Hawkhead (@haikuhawk.bsky.social) has been writing haiku and illustrating for over 25 years. His work has been published all over the world and he has won a number of haiku competitions. John’s books of haiku and senryu, ‘Small Shadows’ and ‘Bone Moon’, are now available from Alba Publishing (http://www.albapublishing.com/).
Mandrake by Sarah Das Gupta
A screaming root
by Sarah Das Gupta
beneath the moon’s watery spears
black hound needed
| Botanical name: | Mandragora officinarum |
| Popular names: | Satan’s Apple, Devil’s Turnip, Manroot, Circe’s Plant |
| Family: | Solanaceae |
| Origin: | Mediterranean, Middle East, North Africa. |
| Flower: | Purple–yellow-green, bell-shaped corolla, five petals, flowers grow from rosette of leaves. |
| Habitat: | Stony waste ground, edge of woodland, coastal areas |
The long taproot, shaped like a human form, was said to scream when pulled from the ground. Anyone hearing this would go mad. In Medieval times, it was believed the only way to harvest the plant was on a moonlit night and using a black dog with a cord attached to the plant to uproot it!
It was also believed that the mandrake first grew from the dripping ‘juices’ of a hanged man. This, by the medieval Doctrine of Signatures which taught that the shape and appearance of a plant linked it to parts of the human body, made the mandrake highly valued for specific ailments. However, the poisonous nature of the plant made its medicinal use difficult, as Harry Potter fans may know
The mandrake contains tropane alkaloids which give it narcotic, emetic, sedative and hallucinogenic properties. As early as the fourteenth century BC the plant is mentioned in cuneiform texts and subsequently in Arabic, Greek and Roman writing. It was said the root could be seen as a baby in form, albeit a rather ugly one. This gave rise to the belief that the plant helped childless women to conceive.
Mandrake roots were valuable and not surprisingly there were fraudsters at country fairs with oddly-shaped ‘mandrakes’ carved from turnip roots. It was even believed that these roots knew the sites of buried treasure. They would whisper the secret to their owner, if they trusted him. These beautiful lines from Shakespeare suggest Mandrake was still in use in the 16th century:
‘Give me to drink mandragora.
William Shakespeare,
That I might sleep out the great gap of time
My Antony is away.’
Anthony and Cleopatra, Act 1, Scene 1.
Further reading:
‘Pagan Portals – By Wolfsbane & Mandrake Root: The Shadow World of Plants and Their Poisons’, 2017, Draco, M., John Hunt Publishing Limited, ISBN: 1780995725.
‘Poisonous Plants in Great Britain’, 2008, Gillam, F., Wooden Books, ISBN: 1904263879.
‘Witch’s Garden: Plants in folklore, magic and traditional medicine’, 2020, Lawrence, S., Welbeck London, ISBN: 978178739436.
Author bio:
Sarah Das Gupta is a young 81 year old. Loves writing haiku and most forms of poetry. Is learning to walk after an accident. Main outside interests include equine sports. Lives near Cambridge, UK. Read other sciku by Sarah here.
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